Oppositional/defiant chickens

[dwegg]

I also made my girls a lovely new dust bath with sand mixed with DE. I made it the day before I left for Christmas as a gift from the 'food man'. They had been dusting in holes in the run so I made a large rectangle wood frame and filled it with the exact same sand...and all they do is poop in it...?!? I also read they liked pumpkins so I went and collected all the pumpkins from my neighbors and they won't even touch them. I still have a pile of pumpkins sitting in my garage!
BUT they love ground meat (chicken crack!)

 

[SallyF]

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Oh, I had those a while back also. That's why the term trips off my tongue so lightly!

 

[highcountrychickens]

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Did you BUTTER the popcorn?
Did you use POTTING soil?

quite aficionados some of these discriminating avian aristocrats...

as for laying... there are ways to get them to lay...

 

[Happy Chooks]

Who would have thought one could have hoity toity chickens?

 

[lngrid]

A BYCer here posted that her vet told her chickens recognize food by visual cues they learn early in life. They don't use smell to identify food and if they don't "learn" that something is edible in their learning years, they can actually starve to death before they figure things out. Maybe that's why they give you stinkeye about popcorn?

I also read here at BYC that someone's chickens were terrified by a pumpkin she put in their run. They actually cowered away from it in a corner!

Could it be the same way with the sand and ashes?

 

[JakRat]

mine love marshmellows... when they were pullets they would literally jump for them...

 

[insiderart]

Yep definitely ODD chickens..

 

[gsim]

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Mine eat just about anything I take to them. I think the number/size of the flock has something to do with it. I have 24 pullets and it seems that they just gobble up everything as if they might not get their share if they don't just dive onto whatever I put out there.

I read on a posted link that potato peels were supposed to be bad for them so I have avoided that. it was definitely listed in a group of things that were supposed to be no-no's for chooks. I also read that alfalfa hay is bad for them too. Might have been in the same post. My hatchery in Ohio (Meyers) is good about answering questions like this so I will follow up today with them.

 

[gsim]

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I can visualize mine eating their way inside of a large pumpkin and then eating until they passed out!

 

[Sjisty]

My chickens won't touch popcorn, either. They also don't like brown bread, but white is okay. I tried green beans - talk about stink-eye! They will eat pumpkin when there's nothing else around. They absolutely love watermelon. Tomatoes were a no go. My one RIR stole a feeder fish from the ducks the other day. I'm going to go into town to get some cabbage since I read the threads on that.

Haven't made them their own dust bath yet - between them and the dog, they have turned the whole back yard into one!